There are five challengers to incumbent Sheriff Susan Hutson in this year’s race to head the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office this year. Whoever wins will be tasked with managing and operating the city’s correctional facilities, providing security and support to the criminal courts and enforcing civil court orders.
They will also have to contend with regaining the public’s trust after 10 inmates escaped the parish jail this year, addressing current personnel shortages amid proposed spending cuts and dealing with external pressure to partake in federal immigration enforcement activities.
Hutson is attempting to defend her record and articulate her vision for the future. But her most competitive opponents, however, say that the writing may be on the wall for her candidacy. Despite several accomplishments during her term, including securing wage increases for deputies and launching a new investigation case management system, Hutson has also faced criticism for a number of things that have gone wrong on her watch. Those include the jail break in May, an inmate being mistakenly released two months later and a ransomware attack to the sheriff’s office that disrupted some civil court proceedings this September…